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“In the case of the last of these, a number of confectionery products have reduced in size.

"This is treated as a price increase as consumers get less for their money.”

Richard Campbell, a statistician at the ONS, said: “We are always careful to compare like for like so if people are getting less for their money then it is effectively a price increase.

“Our price collectors noticed that chocolate bars and bags of sweets were decreasing in size by around 10 per cent so we felt it was important to inform the public.

Cadbury recently decreased the weight of its Dairy Milk chocolate bar from 49g to 45g while continuing to charge 59p.

It reduced the size in the wake of rising fuel and cocoa prices.

A 205g bag of Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles Sharing Bag reduced to 170g, a 175g Smarties bag is now 147g and Nestle's Munchies Pouch dropped from 150g to 126g.

The shrinkage has been attributed to the rising cost of production and seems to have centred on family pack sizes, which are easier to alter than the single bars.

A spokesman for consumer magazine Which? said shrinking products could be an underhand way of inflating prices and called for pricing to be clearer and the food companies to make any changes obvious to their customers.

Global food costs had increased because of poor harvests in Britain and in the US which had a knock on effect on animal products such as milk.